Prof. Thomas O'Connor's lab is a research group in Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. We apply theoretical and computational tools to understand the microscopic molecular mechanisms that govern the macroscopic material behaviors of polymers and soft materials. We are interested in using these discoveries to guide the creation of more sustainable, durable, and reliable plastic materials, and to improve the efficiency of soft material manufacturing and recycling methods.

We apply high-performance computational modeling at molecular, mesoscopic, and continuum scales to tackle challenging fundamental problems in soft material dynamics, mechanics, design, and manufacturing.